


Daffodils

by downbythebay



Category: Leverage
Genre: Adult Content, Backstory, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1217080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downbythebay/pseuds/downbythebay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as a part of the Big Bang Job 2012. Fan mix by crescent_gaia available [here](http://crescentfanfic.livejournal.com/5486.html). Thanks to alinaandalion for beta-reading. 
> 
>  

_“We’re all addicts, Nate. We’re all addicted to our pasts…You want it to feel how it used to feel.”  
\--Sophie Devereaux,_ The First David Job

 

“We weren’t sure about letting her go climbing with her University friends.”

The bedroom was dark as Sophie clutched the phone to her ear with one hand, and held the sheets over her sweat-damp breast with the other, her heart uncharacteristically ascending to her throat as she listened to the woman on the other end of the phone. The only light in the room came from the few stray beams of Boston streetlamps through cracks in the blackout curtains.

“We didn’t know anything about them, but she was such a good hiker, smart.”

There was a five hour time difference from Boston to England. Though it was only seven a.m. in Northern Yorkshire, in the summer months the sun would already be shining brightly, and after being up most of the night Sophie had to suppress a yawn in spite of the adrenaline flooding her body.

“She always checked in, always.” Sophie had known Barbara a long time, and never before had the woman sounded so afraid. “Richard and I have already asked around the pubs. The owner of their B-and-B didn’t remember seeing Aine—”

Like all the Siobhans and Aoifes and Niamhs of the world, Aine Daly had been cursed with a half-Irish father who had given her a name that you never would have guessed was pronounced awn-ya just by looking at it. To this day, Barbara was the only woman Sophie knew of who had agreed to sentence her child to being awkwardly stumbled across during role call all through the school years when she could have prevented it. It must have been the first and last time Barbra had given her husband an inch on anything.

“He said that the others came in late last night, but they’ve already gone. Richard is taking a group up to look for her, but it’s already been twelve hours. Our youngest is supposed to be getting married in three days, now she’s talking about flying out from Cork to help the search. I convinced her not to call off the wedding, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Sophie swallowed and gathered the sheet closer. She had done her share of comforting bereaved and anxious family members and loved ones in the past, but this was different. Barbara wasn’t just another client, someone she could manipulate, even if for her own good. It was more than a lack of clothing that left Sophie feeling suddenly exposed.

“Stay strong, Babs,” Sophie kept her voice low as Nate shifted in bed beside her. “You know Aine; she’s tough as nails, she can take care of herself. I’m going to be on the next flight out.”

Sophie hung up the phone and dropped it on the bedside table. She pinched the bridge of her nose against a migraine as Nate stirred and propped himself up in bed, his dark curls standing up at odd angles.

“What is it?” he said, his fingertips brushing her bare arm as she slid out of bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Get the others up,” she said, shimmying into her slip and dress from the night before. “Tell them to pack a bag for an English summer; I’m going home to change.”

Nate sat up in bed, leaning back against the headboard, and flung one arm out to peer at the electric alarm clock on the nightstand. “It’s a bit early for a case, don’t you think?”

Nate groaned and set down the alarm clock to gingerly examine the soreness of his still-healing shoulder.

“I’m afraid this can’t wait,” Sophie sat on the edge of the bed to slip on her heels. “Friends of mine from England, their daughter has gone missing. I said we’d help.”

“I thought we were going to take a break,” Nate said. “To make some changes.”

Sophie dropped down onto the edge of the bed and set a hand on Nate’s leg beneath the covers.

Sophie thought of her time away from the team. Coming back, she thought things would be different, somehow better. But coming back, having to rescue Nate; it was the same song and dance as ever. Nate putting himself at hazard, trying to martyr himself, again, getting shot, again. As much as they tried to be more honest with the team and themselves, she couldn’t see how this time it would be any different.

“Nothing ever changes,” she gave his ankle a gentle squeeze. “You should know that.”

“Okay. Shouldn’t we at least get Hardison to do some reconnaissance before we jump into this case,” Nate said.

Grabbing her purse, she paused just a moment longer to jot three names down on a piece of paper and left it on the night stand.

“Have Hardison get started on these names,” she said. “And a flight into Heathrow; I’ll be back.”

Nate sat up, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“There’s an innocent girl in trouble,” Sophie said, already on her way out of the bedroom. “What more is there?”

* * *

Her mother had been an actress, from what she had managed to piece together from fractured childhood memories, in both the modern and the Roman sense. She had grown up on Shakespeare and crocodile tears and making up stories to entertain herself on long nights alone. She learned to think of things that made her uncomfortable as adventures, and being able to get anyone to do anything was her magical power. That was how she made her living; it was a good life, comfortable.

By twenty-five, she had grown sick of London, the all-night parties, the frivolous, wealthy friends who were even more counterfeit than she, the fog and the pollution, the crowds and the queues at the Costa Coffee down the stairs from her flat. All the conveniences of the city. Even thieves and grifters had their limits. At twenty-five, she had had enough.

With some forged credentials she found work as a curatorial assistant at the ancestral home of the Calvert family, near the civil parish of Northallerton. It was there that she met Richard and Barbara Daly, the caretakers and their two young daughters, Aine and Naomi, who lived in a little cottage on the estate. They called it Bryony Cottage, for the white flowering hedgerows that surrounded the property.

They often invited her over for afternoon tea and biscuits, and afterwards Richard would read a bit of poetry from Shelley or Keats or Coleridge and the girls would bring her out to the lake to show her how to skip rocks on the glassy surface. And she could stare so long at the clouds and the trees reflecting off the water, she could almost feel “that serene and blessed mood in which the affections gently lead us on until the breath of this corporeal frame and even the motion of our human blood almost suspended, we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul,” which Wordsworth had perceived above Tintern Abbey.

In the winter, the sun would set so early, even before they could polish of Babs’s latest tin of biscuits and the girls could run about outside searching for the beavers they had read about in the Narnia books. Richard would drive her home in a truck that smelled like fertilizer and peat moss to her little room on Scotch Corner, above a pub called the Heifer. It was world away from her life as a London socialite, and though her amassed wealth and trinkets were only a train ride away, despite the lack of creature comforts, she stayed on Scotch Corner, spending her days cataloging silverware and bed curtains, waiting for afternoon tea to feel like she was alive, something real.

It took weeks for them to convince her to come with them on a Sunday stroll. After church they drove an hour to a place called Greenhead Ghyll in the Lake District where the great romantic poets once trod, and had lunch in the stony ruins of an ancient sheepfold. They spent the rest of the day picking their way on hands and knees up the face of the mountain. Richard led the way, and Babs stayed behind her to offer encouragement and the two girls bounced back and forth between their parents, passing her five or six times before they reached the peak and the slow descent back to the village. It was the single filthiest, exhausting, and exhilarating thing she had ever done. Even the cottage pie she had eaten at the pub that night at the base of the mountain had tasted like victory.

She had stolen a Degas in Paris, and Grecian Marbles, and had recently acquired the Rembrandt seascape, not to mention the hearts of thousands of men. But she couldn’t con a mountain, when there was nothing for miles but stone and grass and foxglove and sheep. There was no lie she could tell yourself that could change the way her heart beat so hard she could feel her blood rushing in the crooks of her elbows and in her groin and down the backs of her knees. She had done that of her own power.

She fell into bed that night with blistered feet and dirt staunchly clinging to her cuticles, and yet somehow elated at discovering something that was all her.

At the end of the year, the estate no longer needed the extra help with collections. She returned to her London flat without even nicking anything. Through the winter and the spring she fell back into her usual routine, pulling off small jobs here and there where opportunity beckoned, toying with royal aliases. But in the summer, when the fog descended so thickly upon London that even her whitest furs seemed dingy after she strolled too long on Piccadilly with a rich acquaintance, she boarded a train for North Yorkshire and the stone fences and shining tarns that belonged just to her.

* * *

When Sophie returned to the apartment, Hardison had compiled three profiles. Sophie set her bag down at the door and slid into seat beside Parker on the sofa without interrupting his presentation.

“John Powell, Michael Lyons, and Grace Sloan, all three are students at University of London, all three from wealthy families, a hand full of drug and other misdemeanor charges between them, and all three were questioned in the disappearance of Maria Laraichi, a student from Morocco, who went missing in the spring of 2007. The local bobbies found cocaine and blood at her apartment, no one was ever charged.”

From his seat at the bar, Nate looked expectantly at Sophie.

“I’m as proud of mother England as the next patriot, but racism is just as much a problem there as it is here. Under the circumstances, it would be easy enough to write off the disappearance of a foreign student. These three,” Sophie said, pointing at the three faces displayed on the flat screen. “Were the last to see Aine Daly, they spent the last week training for the three peaks challenge, to raise awareness for the protection of rainforests. Babs—Aine’s mother—said that they were supposed to climb Helvellyn yesterday, but had to change their plans because of the weather. That was the last she heard from Aine.”

“This is a friend of yours?” Eliot asked.

“You might say that,” Sophie agreed.

“It’s three o’clock in the damn morning,” Hardison yawned as he began another search, this time bringing up Aine’s transcript, grant applications, and one news article on the Calvert House. “I’m not saying these kids came up looking squeaky clean, but are we sure they aren’t just messing around, doing college kid things: another case of a grown-up woman emotionally stunted in adolescence?”

Parker glared accusingly and Hardison swallowed.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with maintaining a youthful lifestyle.”

“Not Aine,” Sophie said. “She’s a very serious student. She wouldn’t lie to her parents.”

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Parker offered hopefully, then frowned. “That your friend is the second person to go missing after hanging out with these people.”

“No such thing as coincidence,” Eliot grunted.

On either side of her Parker and Eliot sat like to opposing forces of nature. Eliot sat, focused and painfully still, the lack of motion quite the opposite of relaxation, watching and listening like a stone. Parker on her other side was twitching eagerly, he head snapping back and forth with each new voice added to the conversation, like a cat chasing after a glint of light.

“People do change,” Nate said.

Sophie shook her head. “Most students in England take time off before university to travel, to spend time with friends. Aine spent her time earning money for school and volunteering with children’s education programs—it was all she would talk about the last I saw her.”

Sophie paused a moment to consider her next words. “We spent some time together while I was on sabbatical.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now,” Nate lifted one eyebrow, burying himself up to the bridge of his nose in a mug of coffee. Even outside of sniffing range, she knew it was more Irish than coffee.

“We’ve all had ghosts creeping up from our pasts,” Sophie adjusted her seat indignantly. “It’s just another job.”

“I know we’ve got a girl out in the elements,” Eliot said. “But we’re going to need more time to prep this. She could be anywhere.”

“According to my contact, the winds kept them off the edges of Helvellyn, but the others were still in Grasmere as of last night,” Sophie said, rifling through the recesses of her memory. “Besides Helvellyn, the closest mountains are Langdale Pike, Skiddaw, and Scafell. Odds are she’s on one of those.”

Hardison tapped a few keys and brought up several images of the rolling landscape. Huge expanses of green, broken by the grey of boulders and the crystal blue of tarns hundreds and thousands of miles above sea level. Parker bit her lip and bounced on the sofa cushion excitedly.

“That is a lot of nature,” Hardison squinted at the pictures. “I don’t like this; I don’t like this one bit. Do they even have telephone lines?”

Eliot looked to Sophie and narrowed his gaze.

“You think all I do is drink champagne and wear little dresses?”

“If she’s only been gone twelve hours it’s likely the police can’t begin a full investigation. We’ll start with the co-eds,” Nate pointed to the television screens. “They were the last to see her; we find them, we can narrow the search for the girl, to give mountain rescue a better chance of bringing her home.”

Sophie rested her chin in the palm of her hand and tried not to think of the alternative.

“So we’re stealing a mountain again…again?” Parker looked between Sophie and Nate expectantly.

“We’ll steal all of the Lake District if we have to,” Sophie said with a dramatic tilt of her chin.

“Let’s just focus on hashing out the details before we bring out the big guns,” Nate offered and Sophie wondered when he had become the one to temper her.

“These kids have been off the grid for days, but luckily,” Hardison said, bringing up further details on the screen. “I did get a hit on one of daddy’s credit cards, a room for three at the Caesar Hotel in London, so unless John Powell, Sr., esquire has a kinky little secret, I’m guessing the kiddies stopped in for a little R-and-R after a long day of abandoning their friend to torment and death on the side of Mount Doom.”

“Clean passports all around,” Hardison handed them each a small packet. “Our flight leaves in less than two hours. I certainly hope y’all don’t intend to check baggage.”

“Let’s go steal a romantic landscape,” Nate declared, with some degree of irony in his voice.

The team rose from their seats and gathered their bags, save Eliot, who still did not travel with luggage, and shook the car keys on his way out the door. Parker unzipped her bag to check on her gear one last time; Sophie suspected she might have been tucking it into bed. Hardison closed up his computer and gathered extension cords and Bluetooth headsets into his messenger bag before heading out the door as Nate sidled up beside her.

“Something tells me this isn’t just another job for you,” he said, leaning in sotto voce.

“It’s never just another job with us; there’s always someone needing justification,” Sophie brushed her hair off her shoulder and lifted her bag.

Her earlier conversation with Babs had left her feeling unsteady. They never talked about it, but she had left to find herself, perhaps even to try to remake herself, to burry Sophie Devereaux and rise from the ashes. But to tell the truth, she had spent most of her time retracing her steps, picking up the pieces of her past. Her life with the Daly’s had been a happy one, but if her sojourn back to her old haunts had proved anything, it was that you can’t go back.

“It’s more than that,” Nate put out an arm to bar her passage from the apartment. “You’re the one we trust to keep us balanced—”

“Because we’re the paragon of balance? It’s going to be hard to go back,” Sophie admitted. “But I know what I’m doing.”

“We will find these people; we’ll figure out what happened,” Nate said. “But you should be prepared to face the idea that your friend knew what she was getting into with these people.”

“I can’t believe that,” Sophie said. “Not without hearing her side of the story—”

Nate cut her off. “You’re not listening to what I’m saying.”

“You’re not listening,” she protested. “To me. I understand what it must be like, coming from a small town, how it could be easy for her to be misled by people who seem to have such glamorous lives. But she told her mother they were trying to raise awareness to preserve the rainforest. Aine thought she was doing something good. I know what it looks like, but maybe she thought they were turning over a new leaf and put her trust in the wrong people.”

“If there is more to this,” Nate broke the silence between them. “We deserve to know.”

“It’s been a long time,” Sophie said. “I don’t have the same relationship with them that I used to, but hearing Babs on the phone like that, brings all those feelings back, you know. I just want to help them any way we can.”

“And we will, but we need you to keep your head on straight for this one,” Nate began tentatively, as though it were strange for him to try on the words he had heard so often from others. “The rest of us are following you into uncharted territory right now.”

“The truth is,” she said. “The Dalys are the closest thing I had to a real family; I’ve known Aine since she was in pigtails; she used to steal my clothes, my makeup. I’m not the same person I was back then, but I’ve never had anyone else like Aine in my life.”

“A thief?” Nate asked.

“Someone who wanted to be like me,” Sophie dipped her head toward the doorway.

Nate pulled the door open to allow her out. “Let’s bring her home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You really are beautiful”_  
>  \--Nathan Ford, The Lonely Hearts Job

She had been lying since she was in diapers. The Lady Charlotte Prentice, Eighteenth Duchess of Hanover was a persona she had imagined as a hungry art student, for when she was feeling lonely; it gave her a pretext for attending the parties with the best hors d'oeuvres, in-between nicking paintings and baubles. By the time she met William, Charlotte was like an old friend, or a comfortably worn sweater.

It was the last summer she spent in North Yorkshire, when she attended the opening of her friend’s photography exhibition at a small gallery in York. The focus of the collection was to promote positive body image, which in artistic terms translated to a lot of nude photographs of people who probably should not have been naked in front of a camera.

She wandered through the halls of the gallery, sipping from a champagne flute in her best satin blouson, looking over black and white photographs of body parts.

Her eyes lingered on one still, an arched hip, belonging to a man, judging from the crescent ridge of muscle and the trail of hair leading off into the left bottom corner of the frame.

“Amelia,” she waved her photographer friend over, pointing with the rim of her glass. “Who is this?”

“Oh, Charlotte,” Amelia fell heavily upon her neck, breath reeking of dry merlot. “You know that’s completely irrelevant to my artistic vision. But between you and I,” Amelia leaned in clandestinely. “That hip belongs to William Lawrence Howard Beaumont, next in line to be Earl of Kensington. We were school chums, Larry and I. You see, I’m not stranger to the vast benefits of royal patronage after all.”

Sophie stood transfixed. “So far from London?”

“See for yourself,” Amelia nudged her playfully. “He’s here; I’ll introduce you.”

“Larry,” Amelia called out to a group congregating under a pair of wrinkled knees. Amelia’s skin felt damp and warm against her bared shoulder as they crossed the room to meet the group.

“Larry,” Amelia said at last, singling out a tall, well-built man with brown hair and blue eyes. “I’d like to present Lady Charlotte Prentice, Eighteenth Duchess of Hanover.”

“It’s my pleasure. Will, if you don’t mind,” he reached out a hand informally. “Only my mother still calls me Larry. She’s had a difficult time with my father’s passing.”

“My condolences,” Sophie began softly.

“It’s hard to mourn the loss of someone you hardly knew,” Will said. “I spent most of my childhood between boarding schools and the Yorkshire moors, visiting with my cousins not far from here. This is where my mother grew up. I hope you’ve found it to your liking.”

“Very much so,” Sophie agreed, and involuntary smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “There’s nothing quite like it.”

“Charlotte was just admiring your portrait,” Amelia chimed. Sophie let her brow furrow subtly.

“I see,” Will said, a hint of a blush creeping into his cheeks. “I think I’ll be needing another drink. Can I get you anything?”

“I’ll join you,” Sophie said.

Will touched her on the elbow and ushered her toward the refreshment table.

“I didn’t mean to cause you any embarrassment,” she whispered.

Will shrugged. “No, I take full responsibility. Amelia and I were, I suppose, ‘sloshed’ might be putting it decorously.”

Sophie paused to look around the gallery and let her arm brush against his.

“They are lovely photographs, though, don’t you think?” she said, years of training and stylistic terminology suddenly seeming to have trickled from her mind. “Very artistic, meaningful.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Will said, turning to her as he set his glass on the counter. “But I think there are some things which we can all agree are more beautiful than others.”

Sophie wet her lips. “I’ll take the rosé,” she nodded to the bartender.

They gathered their drinks and retreated to a small alcove with a bay window, looking toward York Minster. As they stood, looking out across the city, she tried to make a game of getting closer to him, let her toe tap his heel, and when he didn’t move she brushed her arm against his side.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I always thought I’d like a little brother, someone to eat the rest of the biscuit for me after I had licked the crème out.”

Sophie laughed. “I have two sisters, of a sort, both younger. The littlest one is always off in her own world, but my middle sister is always getting into my things: stains on my clothes, missing earrings, using my perfume, my lipstick. Of course, with traveling I don’t see them as often as I’d like.”

“I hope you’ll be staying long enough to enjoy the countryside,” he said. “Hiking, historic monuments, the abbeys and priories, Castle Howard?”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” Sophie admitted, lifting her glass to her lips.

“I’ll give you the family tour,” Will nudged her with his shoulder. “My favorite part is the café in the basement.”

Sophie smiled recalling the coffee shop below her London apartment, in spite of its idiosyncrasies she found herself longing for its familiarity and comfort: the specially selected pieces from her collection of art and statuary, the smell of coffee and tea cakes that wafted to her door in the morning.

“I think I get your meaning.”

“All the grandest estates have become so unsustainable, they have to resort to selling mugs embossed with renderings of scenes from Pride and Prejudice,” Will said.

“All the girls love Mr. Darcy,” Sophie said.

“Oh yes,” Will chuckled. “So the more aloof I am, the more women will flock after me.”

Sophie perched her chin on the rim of her glass. “Or you could just take off your clothes; that seems to work fairly well.”

“Yes,” he laughed. “I could do that, couldn’t I?”

Sophie grinned until her cheeks felt tight. It had been weeks since she had turned on the charm for a mark, and even longer since she had done it just for the simple pleasure of it, to feel her heart pounding in the company of a beautiful man. She felt somehow giddy, like the feeling of having drunk too much champagne.

“It is a beautiful city,” she said. Looking out across the cityscape, she could see the sunset light glinting off the white stone of the Minster steeple in the distance.

“I prefer the view from here,” Will leaned against the corner wall, staring at her over his glass. “Beautiful.”

“Perhaps you should take a closer look,” she said, one corner of her lip tilting upward despite her best efforts to remain demure.

“How so?” Will asked.

“It’s only that the gallery will be closing shortly, and I have seen more of you than you’ve seen of me. Perhaps we should even things up a bit. Perhaps we could continue our conversation at your hotel?”

He dipped down and offered her his arm. “It would be my honor.”

* * *

It was past two in the afternoon when they were met just outside the airport by a small, grey-haired woman. Sophie let her cellphone drop from her ear as she spied the familiar woman standing one of the long benches in the glass-enclosed tunnel leading away from international arrivals, waving above the heads of the other bystanders awaiting new arrivals.

“Sophie!” she called out, her volume surprising a businessman passing by as she hopped down from the bench with impressive agility for a woman of her age.

“Babs,” Sophie echoed, dropping her duffle to greet the woman with a familial hug, which still seemed somehow awkward from the outside perception, especially given the difference in their heights.

“Is that Sophie’s mom?” Parker whispered as they approached through the crowd.

Observing the two critically, Nate stumbled and adjusted his grip on the luggage strap on his shoulder.

“I don’t think so.”

“You look so skinny,” Babs stood back to look Sophie, and grabbed the closest man she could find, which serendipitously happened to be Nate. “Doesn’t she look skinny?”

Nate pursed his lips together and shrugged. Babs slapped his arm gently, and Eliot and Hardison laughed discretely.

“Men are positively useless,” she chided.

“Babs, these are my colleagues,” Sophie motioned to the others. “Nate, Eliot, Hardison, and Parker; this is Barbara. What can we do to help?”

“The last time I spoke with Richard, he and a group of volunteers were heading to the base of Scafell Pike,” Babs explained. “There are other groups on their way to Langdale and Skiddaw; not many are willing to climb these mountains on a wild goose chase. It’s been so warm these past few days.”

“Well, hopefully, we can narrow that field for you,” Nate said.

“I’ll take you to the car,” Babs said. “Its good you packed light; it’s going to be a bit of a squeeze with all six of us in the van—”

She caught sight of Hardison’s two massive bags. “Oh.”

Eliot frowned. “He hacked into the airline’s security network and changed the size restrictions for carry-ons.”

“Was it, or was it not faster than waiting at baggage claim?” Hardison looked up from the screen of his smartphone. “I told y’all I need this stuff.”

“Right then,” Babs agreed, starting down the hall in the direction of the exit to the parking lot. “We’ll just stick the younglings in the back and pile the luggage on top.”

Eliot glared as they made their way through the crowd, into the parking lot to a blue van that looked suspiciously like Lucille’s British cousin. Sophie climbed in the front and Nate opened the door to wave Hardison into the back. Parker climbed in eagerly after him.

Eliot growled. “Can’t believe I’m riding in the back, with someone else’s luggage on my lap.” He flopped into the back seat and shoved one of the duffles across to Hardison.

Nate handed him the next bag and loaded the rest onto the middle bench and climbed into the van.

“I got another hit on the credit card,” Hardison called from the back seat. “Opening a tab at the Wild Hart, a wine bar in London.”

“I know the place,” Sophie said.

Hardison struck a few more keys. “It looks like a half-hour drive from here. I’m sending the GPS to your phone.”

“Let’s make it fifteen,” in the right front driver’s seat, Babs accelerated and shifted gears. “Where to navigatrix?”

Nate involuntarily grabbed the handlebar above the door as the van turned hard onto a roundabout. “Look kids: Big Ben, Parliament.”

Parker sat up and peered around the bag in her lap. “Sophie’s a navagatrix?”

They pulled up to the bar just shy of twenty minutes later and even before the van came to a complete stop, Eliot had climbed over the luggage and Nate to get out of the car.

“It’s like being born,” Eliot declared, both feet back on solid ground, one side of his hair still standing on end from the last turn into the parking spot.

“I’m actually quite cozy,” Parker offered.

“And by the way, Hardison,” Eliot pointed an accusing finger into the back seat. “It’s not the van that smells; it’s you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hardison said, trapped in the far corner of the back seat, by Parker, still draped over a small suitcase.

“It’s all the damn junk food you eat,” Eliot snapped. “Your body’s trying to sweat out all the crap you put in to it.”

“I can’t believe you would do Lucille like that,” Hardison said. “After everything we’ve been through.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Nate said, pulling the car door all the way open, as though he were holding office hours. “Now the locals probably wouldn’t take too kindly to us bursting down the doors and browbeating paying customers. Sophie and I will go in and bring the kids out. Eliot, Hardison, and Parker get things ready around back. Best case scenario, Aine’s inside and we all have a good laugh about this in years to come. Worst case, we bring them down, hard.”

“How are you planning on getting them out here?” Hardison said. “I mean, I can trigger a car alarm, but that’s gonna make a scene.”

Sophie climbed out of the car, unbuttoning one more button on her blouse, and tousled her hair.

“Hardison, give me your Bonine.”

“I need that,” Hardison protested. “I get motion sick.”

“Just give it to her,” Eliot snapped.

“If I throw up, I’m aiming for you,” Hardison reached into his bag, somewhere below Parker’s armpit.

“We know they like to party,” Sophie opened the small tube and emptied a few of the small pills into her hand. “So let’s give them a party.”

Folding up her leggings and draping her scarf over her hips, the outfit she had thrown on for a last-minute flight has suddenly become fashionable.

“I don’t get it,” Hardison said. “We can’t go in to ask a few questions, but Sophie can belly up to the bar to peddle fake drugs?”

“That’s the thing about Sophie,” Nate said, as though the answer should be quite obvious. “She’s never an outsider.”

Inside the bar was dimly lit, the décor mostly dark wood and deep reds and burgundies. The front room was mostly empty, but there were three young people seated at a table in the corner. Aine was not among them, which for Sophie meant it was time to get to work.

Sophie stood at the bar and ordered a glass of champagne, nudging the small bowl of beer nuts aside with one hand she took a sip of the pale, bubbling liquid. Turning on her heels she pulled the nearest chair out with the toe of her shoe and sat down at the table.

“Who are you?” the nearest man straightened up at the intrusion.

Sophie tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You can call me Viola.”

* * *

The estate at Kensington was absolutely extravagant. She and Will had been seeing one another here and there for over two months before they had revealed their relationship to his mother. She was far from doubt about her ability to make a good impression on the countess, she had passed for royalty on grander stages before, but she still could not entirely set aside the butterflies in her stomach.

She hadn’t eaten since the night before; it was the same before any performance. She was nervous because she cared. Of all her aliases, the Lady Charlotte Prentice was perhaps most like her, the most informed by her experiences; she had to be to maintain consistency. Though she was nervous, the newness of the experience made her all the more excited and eager to go through with, another adventure to enrich her imaginative life.

They had returned to London from York only hours before. After freshening up, she sat in the parlour with her ankles crossed, brushing her fingertips over the arm of the chair. Will stood at the great oak credenza, tapped his foot and poured himself another Scotch from the crystal decanter. She took one last cleansing breath and rose from the richly upholstered divan Lady Charlotte Prentice. As he lifted the glass, she set her fingers on the rim and pressed it back down to the table.

“Easy,” she said.

“You don’t know my mother,” he said. “She is cantankerous, to say the least. I believe it has something to do with growing up on the Yorkshire Moors. She’s like one of those gnarled trees you see clinging to an outcropping of rock on the side of a riverbed.”

“She sounds like a woman I’d like to meet,” Sophie said, one finger lingering at the cuff of his sleeve. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Sophie adjusted his collar fondly as the valet opened the chamber door. The woman who entered was relatively small in stature, reminding Sophie of Babs, in that way, and putting her at ease. She wore a blue dress in velvet and satin and delicate gloves.

“Mother,” Will stood up straight to greet the woman with silver hair. “Charlotte, may I present Countess Emily Catherine Beaumont.”

“My Lady,” Sophie said, with a small nod, forgoing the terribly old-fashioned curtsey.

“Mother this is Lady Charlotte Prentice, eighteenth duchess of Hanover,” Will paused a moment, and Sophie felt her heart flutter, awaiting his next words. “My sweetheart.”

Sophie paused a moment to consider; it was less sensational than ‘lover,’ and less evocative of bubblegum and acne than ‘girlfriend.’ It was, for lack of a better word, sweet, and she found herself smiling at the sound of it.

“Larry,” said the countess. “Why don’t you ask Helen to prepare a pot of tea?”

Will looked dubiously between the two of them, but left the room obediently.

“Have you ever played backgammon?” the Countess asked, motioning to the parlour table.

“On occasion,” Sophie said, taking a seat at the table where the board was arranged, crafted of fine rosewood and ash.

“It’s one of my preferred methods of whiling away the hours,” the Countess said, resetting the checkers along the points of the board with thin fingers. “These days I can seldom find an opponent who understands the true nature of the game, always leaving too much to chance. There is a fair degree of luck involved, yes, but there is also strategy. Much like life.”

“I agree,” Sophie smiled genially, arranging her own pieces across one side of the board and separating the dice.

“I suppose you would consider courting my son a step down in the world, your Grace,” the Countess said wryly.

“I don’t think of it that way,” Sophie replied. “Will—William is a very kind, very intelligent man, in many ways by far my superior.”

“Still, a woman of your position, marrying beneath her,” the Countess rolled the dice and moved her checkers deliberately. “It provides her with considerable leverage in her home life. I would hate to see my son cornered in such a manner, by the allure of a commanding woman.”

“I’m afraid you’ve vested me with more foresight and cunning than I deserve,” Sophie replied, keeping her tone soft, and non-combatant.

“My dear girl, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” the Countess leaned in clandestinely. “The secret is this: all women marry beneath them, no matter their lot in life. What is left for us to decide to what purpose we abase ourselves: to feel powerful, for family, or for affection. What is so important to you that you are willing to loose yourself to find it?”

“It’s a bit soon to be thinking of marriage,” Sophie struggled to clear her throat quietly, as she rolled the dice and moved her checkers across the board. “We just enjoy one another’s company; we go to the theatre, talk about art and poetry, we take walks.”

Will returned to the parlour, looking flushed. Sophie suspected he had sprinted to the kitchen and back, in some sort of misguided attempt to rescue her.

“The tea should be ready shortly,” he announced. “I trust the two of you have managed to get along in my absence.”

“Why yes, dear Charlotte has just informed me that walking is a favorite pastime of yours,” the Countess said. “We should take a stroll through the garden. I could use the fresh air. Larry, would you ask Helen to serve the tea on the veranda?”

They began their stroll after drinking tea on the patio from delicate bone china cups; the weather, at least, seemed to be in their favor. It was cloudy and grey, but warm, and the rain seemed to be holding off for the time being.

The garden was lush, populated by daisies and fountains and foxglove. It was more akin to the organized squares of the grounds of Castle Howard than the brightly colored disarray of the landscaping at Bryony Cottage.

“You’ve studied?” the Countess asked.

“Poetry,” she replied. “Just last week William and I paid a visit to Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s homestead in Grasmere; it was quite lovely.”

“Wordsworth,” the Countess laughed. “Who wrote that monstrosity ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud;’ William, I do hope you managed to show our Germanic cousin some of the more refined sites.”

“I’ve always enjoyed the romantics,” Sophie said.

“Well, to each his own, I suppose,” the Countess agreed, continuing along the cobblestone path with unusual vigor. “Look there; you see the roses on the trellis?”

“By the footbridge?” Will said, taking his mother’s arm dutifully as he peered down the path.

Sophie nodded, following the countess down the path. “They’re quite exquisite.”

“Ah yes, the footbridge,” the Countess pat her son’s arm affectionately as he helped her along. “We’ll cross it when we get to it. Much like intercourse.”

Sophie suspected it was the closest Will’s mother had ever come to talking with him about sex and she felt as though she were now a part of some great moment in their family history.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It depends on the torture. Depends on the man.”_  
>  \--Eliot Spencer, The Experimental Job

Sophie was the first one out of the back door. She hadn’t even seen Eliot move before he had the boy who was following her pinned against the brick of the building. The sudden burst of force startled her, except that Eliot didn’t rough up kids, and these were twenty-five year-old college graduates who should have known better. She liked to think that Eliot had picked up a thing or two from her, an acute awareness of neurolinguistic programming not withstanding, he knew enough that the first one out of the door after her would be the ringleader.

The girl squeaked and the other boy took two steps forward before dropping to the pavement with the crackle of Parker’s taser. He wasn’t unconscious, but more likely than not, wishing that he was. The girl, Grace, struck Eliot across the back with her handbag until Parker brandished her taser once more. She tried to run from the back alley, but Nate and Hardison, and further away, Babs in the van cut off her escape.

“What the hell,” the boy shouted.

Eliot loosed his grip, just a bit, and slammed the young man back into the wall by his shoulders, his upper back taking the brunt of the blow against the bricks, knocking the wind out of him and perhaps cracking a rib, but otherwise a relatively tame strike, by Eliot’s standards.

“Which one are you?” Eliot growled. “Larry, Moe, or Curly?”

“John,” the kid grunted. “Who are you?”

“We’re friends of Aine’s,” Sophie said. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John struggled uselessly in Eliot’s grip.

Another painful thud and John wheezed.

“Try again.” Eliot gripped his shoulder pointedly.

“It was just a couple of joints,” John said. “We thought it would be fun to get high, you know, high. Aine freaked out, said it was stupid and dangerous.”

“Totally uncool,” Grace said and Sophie suspected that the lot of them were drunker than she had previously suspected.

“Oh yeah,” Hardison rolled his eyes. “Because impaired faculties 3,000 feet above sea level are awesome.”

“You’re really tall,” Grace looked up at him with a glazed expression. “Are you like Michael Jordan, or something?”

Hardison let his mouth drop open incredulously. “…the hell is wrong with you people?” He turned to Sophie. “Y’all act like you’ve never seen a black man before.”

Parker pressed her lips together and offered him a consoling pat on the arm. Hardison had to maneuver sideways to avoid her taser-hand.

“Get to the point,” Eliot pressed John firmly into the brick. “Where were you?”

“Scafell,” John choked. “She went off to get away from the smoke, or something. I followed her and tried to cop a feel. She shoved me; I pushed her back and she fell down the side of the rock to the riverbed. I was just trying to get lucky.”

“Oh God,” Sophie took a step back and stumbled. Nate caught her arm to steady her. “Is she alive?”

Eliot put a hand over John’s throat and squeezed, making it well-understood that that was only a threat of the violence he was ready to inflict.

“I don’t know,” John pushed against his arm. “We got the hell out of there.”

“You just left her?” In one motion Eliot had slammed John up against the wall, this time his head connecting with the brick with a thud. “You didn’t even bother to check?”

“It was no big deal,” Grace protested. “It was an accident.”

Parker glared. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“She didn’t want to have sex with you, so you figured you’d leave her to die,” Eliot snarled. “You think that’s what a man does?”

Another crack as the boy’s head hit brick. Nate took a step forward, but Sophie leaned heavily on him to hamper his movement.

“How far did she fall?” Eliot said.

“I don’t know,” John coughed. “Maybe fifteen feet.”

“How steep was the cliff,” Eliot asked. “Was it a free fall, or did she slide some of the way?”

“I don’t remember.”

Another thud; this time John’s eyes rolled back in his head in a daze.

“She sort of rolled,” Grace offered. “I saw it from the rock shelter.”

“If she rolled,” Eliot said. “If she didn’t land on her neck or hit her head, she could still be out there.”

Grace threw herself at Eliot, and seemed to bounce off of his solid form, landing in a heap beside her twitching comrade, still curled into a fetal position on the damp pavement.

Eliot turned on her. “My mother taught me better than to touch a lady in anger,” he said. “But you are seriously stretching the definition of the word.”

“Just sit your ass down and shut up,” Hardison said.

“No,” Eliot through her companion back violently against the wall. “Let her talk. Where were you on the mountain when Aine fell?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said.

John’s head slammed back into the wall pointedly.

“I don’t know,” she screamed. “We got lost, it took us over five hours to get down from the summit. It must have been somewhere between the boulder field and Broad Crag.”

“Parker,” Sophie said sternly. “Tell Babs to call her husband, and tell him to focus the search on Scafell’s southern descent.”

Parker nodded and slipped back to the van waiting at the curb.

“It was just a damn accident,” Grace murmured half-heartedly.

“What about Maria Lariachi?” Nate asked. “Was she an accident too?”

Eliot slammed John back into the wall.

“Maria?” Grace beat the pavement with her fists. “Maria fucking wanted it, okay. Then she freaked out ‘cause she was afraid her parents were going to find out. She was going to say that he raped her. What were we supposed to do? And they were doing so much construction in the student apartments; they never even bothered to check all the rubbish bins.”

This time when Eliot slammed John back into the wall, he heaved the boy’s semi-conscious form a full four inches off the pavement.

“Young man,” Babs seemed to appear all at once at Eliot’s elbow and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “I, of all people, understand your frustration, but this will not help my daughter.”

Eliot took a breath, and the tension in his shoulders relaxed. He released his grip on John, letting his body crumple to the ground.

“Who are you people?” Grace shouted.

Sophie heard the crackle of Parker’s taser before she saw the girl topple back over and Parker appeared with her lips pressed firmly together.

“I’ll get the duct tape,” Hardison volunteered, flourishing a small digital recorder in his hand. “I think the local police might be interested in some new evidence in Maria Lariachi’s case.”

“I’m sure her family would like to know what happened,” Nate said.

Eliot went to the van and perched on the bumper. Sophie observed the man’s hunched posture critically as Nate leaned in from behind her.

“We’ll need some time to clear out before the police arrive,” Sophie said. “Scotland Yard doesn’t precisely care for cowboys and vigilantes running amuck on the streets of London.”

“Can you imagine if somebody had loosed Eliot on Whitechapel back in the day?” Hardison laughed in-between cutting tape between his teeth. “As for our very stylish getaway in Big Ben over there, my phone is already set to send the recording, along with the street address and full work-up on these three in half an hour.”

Sophie nodded and brushed her hands down the front of her blouse. “That should give them time to think about what they’ve done.”

“What do we do now?” Parker asked, sliding open the side door of the van. “We got the bad guys.”

“All that’s left is to find the girl,” Nate said. “And you know my number one rule.”

“Oh,” Parker bounced onto the bench seat. “I know this one, always make sure the minibar is fully stocked.”

“Never pay full price for take-out,” Hardison said.

“Women and children first,” Eliot offered.

“Being distant and withdrawn makes you more attractive?” Sophie suggested.

Nate shook his head. “Never leave a job half-finished.”

Coming around the van, Babs shook the keys in one hand. “Next stop, Grasmere.”

“The home of Wordsworth, Coleridge, a landscape for the great romantic poets,” Sophie climbed into the front seat in agreement.

“Let’s go steal a poem!” Parker declared, sliding the side door closed as Hardison and Eliot climbed over their bags into the back seat.

* * *

_“I had the weed clippers in one hand, I had the prized petunias in the other…”_  
\--Sophie Devereaux, The King George Job  


“I can’t believe we’re here again,” Will leaned against the stone garden wall with a glass of sherry in his hand, eyeing the formally dressed passersby with contempt.

It was summer in Kensington and the heat was oppressive. Their journey to the Countess’s homestead had been a spur of the moment excursion from their usual summer rendezvous in an upscale York hotel or some quaint bed and breakfast near Grasmere, on behalf of his mother’s success in the War Widows Association’s annual horticultural review. Sophie fanned herself with a lace glove and fought down a sudden bout of nausea, stepping down the stairs from the cool, glass-enclosed conservatory.

“I think it’s very important that we came to support your mother’s,” she paused a moment to steel herself against a bought of laughter. “Prize-winning petunias.”

“You know,” Will walked toward her and took her arm, guiding her along the cobblestone footpath genially. “I’m beginning to think mother loves that little bitch more than me.”

He nodded politely to the Countess as they passed the veranda where she mingled happily among her party guests, seated at cast iron tables on the lawn. The Countess still carried her blue ribbon with her like the trophy of a conqueror.

“What?” Sophie said. “Your mother’s new dog? I think she’s adorable, although I don’t understand why anyone would name a dog Theresa.”

The guests seemed to eye them suspiciously as they walked arm in arm through the garden gate, following the narrow footpath out of sight.

“I hate her,” Will said adamantly.

“How can you hate a Yorkshire Terrier?” Sophie laughed.

Will leaned over to offer her a peck on the cheek, brushing aside the ribbon adorning her hat.

“It’s a good thing, Will,” she pat his arm encouragingly. “You’re mother’s moving on from her loss, doing things for herself. She does call you William now, doesn’t she? That’s an improvement.”

Will rolled his eyes, side-stepping to maneuver her away from an outcropping of the hedgerow.

“She did let us stay in the same room. That’s quite a vote of confidence, don’t you think?” she added encouragingly.

“Foregoing propriety for the sake of practicality,” Will dipped his chin down, pausing to wave to a few of his mother’s guests milling about near the roses. “Sounds like Mother.”

“And,” Sophie used her free hand to pin her wide-brimmed hat onto her head against a gust of wind as they made their way from the shelter of the garden wall. “She asked me to call her Auntie; isn’t that darling?”

“I should have known the two of you would align against me,” Will said. “From the very beginning, you were far too chummy with her.”

“I appreciate a woman who speaks her mind,” Sophie said, her ankle catching suddenly on the uneven path. She tipped heavily into Will and he caught her with both arms.

“Easy,” he said, guiding her over to the nearby bench. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she waved him off. “Just a little unsteady, must be the change in the weather.”

“Just wait here; I’ll get you a glass of water,” he said, trooping off dutifully.

Sophie sat on the stone bench and crossed one arm over her stomach, listening for the sounds of the party just on the other side of the garden wall. She was used to feeling in control, of her emotions and of others. But of late she had been haunted by the sense of that security slipping away.

She thought she must have spent too long in one place, content simply to allow things to unfold around her, the sensation of limerence leaving her feeling weak in the knees and out of breath. She was in the midst of a resolution when Theresa came bounding under the bushes.

“Hello, puppy,” Sophie reached out as the dog made a mad dash for the flowerbed.

“No, Theresa,” Sophie hissed. “Get out of there.”

Dirt and leaves began to fly from the flowerbed as the dog dug down, uprooting the brightly colored petunias and marigolds.

“No,” Sophie snuck forward, grabbing the dog around the middle. “Bad Theresa, bad.” Sophie pulled the dog away, but she wriggled free and dove back into the loose earth.

“Very bad,” Sophie hissed, lifting the dog onto her hip to survey the damage to the flowers. At least one plant was uprooted, and many of the delicate tendrils were bruised or broken.

“It’s okay,” Sophie said, pacing back and forth with the dog in her arms. “We can fix it. We’ll fix it.”

She noticed the gardener’s cart a little ways down the path and found a pair of shears. She returned to the ravaged flower bed and righted the uprooted plant, patting the dirt around it, silently lamenting the damage to her cuticles, never mind her fine party dress.

She began pruning away the eschew tendrils of the plants. Theresa circled and sat down beside Sophie, her tail swishing through the grass and dirt. Sophie paused, realizing that the plants now looked lopsided, and continued to prune, carefully gathering up the spent blossoms as the dog panted beside her.

“Theresa!” She could hear the Countess calling from the veranda. “Theresa, where are you?”

The dog barked twice and circled herself excitedly.

“No,” Sophie snapped, pressing one dirty finger to her lips. “Shh!”

“Theresa!”

The dog barked again, running back and forth from the gate as the voice drew closer.

“Traitor,” Sophie hissed, straightening up, and struggling to brush the dirt from her dress.

The Countess came through the gate and scooped up the dog.

“What are you doing all the way out here—” she began before her eyes fell on the dilapidated flowerbed and Sophie, still holding the shears and cropped petunia blossoms.

“Auntie,” she said brightly as Theresa yipped expectantly in her master’s arms. “At least you still have the blue ribbon.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We trust Nate to make sure the plan works. We trust you to make sure we're all okay.”_  
>  \--Alec Hardison, The Two Live Crew Job

A drive that should have lasted just over three hours only lasted two and a half as the van Hardison had begun to refer to as Big Ben, to Nate’s chagrin, pulled into a parking space in what they presumed to be the foothills of an expansive, green mountain range, speckled with the greys and white of rocks and sheep. It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon and Aine had been missing for almost twenty-four hours.

“Here’s some quid,” Babs offered, digging through a change purse and setting a few large coins in Sophie’s open palm. “You go on ahead to feed the meter, I’ll see if I can get ahold of Richard.”

The rest of the team trailed behind Sophie, forming a tight circle alongside the pay-station.

“Where is Scafell?” Eliot asked, looking up.

“You can’t see the summit from here,” Sophie said, pointing out across the horizon. “It’s behind Helvellyn.”

“How far to the summit,” Parker asked, hoisting her pack onto her shoulders expectantly.

“The first time we climbed it, it took us four hours,” Sophie said. “Aine was nine and Naomi was seven.”

“We’ll push; we’ll make it in two,” Nate declared.

“Not like this, we won’t,” Eliot said. “Parker’s got her stuff, but I’m in jeans; Hardison’s wearing fucking Chucks. We need water, probably food, and headlamps if we’re not going to make it off the mountain before sunset.”

“There are sports stores in all these little towns, for hikers,” Sophie said. “We’ll split up and get what we need.”

“I think y’all are forgetting that you pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night last night,” Hardison protested. “I think I have one international credit card on me with a five-hundred dollar limit.”

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose contemplatively. “That won’t get us very far.”

“What about these,” Parker produced a handful of credit cards seemingly from out of nowhere.

Hardison blinked, Sophie frowned, and Eliot rolled his eyes.

“Are those from the co-eds?” Nate asked.

“Hello? Thief,” Parker fanned out the cards demonstratively. “Besides, they’re going to jail; what do they need money for?”

Hardison touched his chin. “The police should have picked them up about an hour and a half ago. How long do you think we have before they flag the cards?”

“It’s hard to say,” Sophie replied. “Maybe an hour.”

“We’ll give it half an hour,” Babs announced, appearing all at once next to Sophie, making Hardison jump involuntarily.

Parker eyed the woman critically. “How do you keep doing that?”

“We’ll each take a card,” Babs explained. “I already have my hiking gear in the van, so I’ll swing by the grocer’s. Everyone will need lightweight clothes, boots, wool socks, backpacks, and a raincoat, just in case. It’s been dry, but that’s no reason to chance it.”

“Babs,” Sophie said. “You’ve never broken a law in your life, now you’re ready to make the leap to credit fraud?”

Babs took one of the cards from Parker and slid it into the pocket in the front of her jacket. “They left my little girl on a mountain,” she said. “The way I see it, it’s not fraud; it’s just justice.”

Sophie laughed as Parker offered her a card. “Okay. You heard the boss, get what you need, and anything else that might seem useful.”

“We split up. They probably don’t get too many Americans out here; let’s try not to draw too much attention to ourselves,” Eliot added, selecting a card and glaring at Hardison in particular. “And anything you buy, you have to carry.”

With nods of agreement they separated, approaching the town from six different directions.

Sophie dipped into the first sporting goods store she approached, and spent a moment browsing over a spinning display of sunglasses near the register and offered the cashier a smile before moving to a display of boots against the far wall.

She lifted a pair of ankle high boots with light blue trim, checking the tag to ensure they were waterproof.

“You never could resist a new pair of shoes.” Sophie jumped involuntarily as Nate appeared at her shoulder.

“I thought we agreed we’d split up,” Sophie sat down and slipped off her flats.

“Because Americans attract people’s attention,” Nate paced along the wall studying the various brands of footwear. “But you’re not American.”

Sophie shook her head. “I see.”

Nate pulled a box off the shelf and took a seat on the bench beside her. “If we’re going to do this, I need to know your head is in the right place. It’s not going to be a cake walk, for any of us, you know, but if there’s something more going on here—”

“I want to help them,” Sophie said. “It’s what we do, isn’t it?”

“Since when does ‘what we do’ include letting Eliot leave a college kid most likely with permanent brain damage,” Nate said.

Sophie scoffed. “No one lets Eliot do anything. I’m not his mother; he doesn’t have to ask my permission to do his job.”

Sophie pulled of the boots and arranged them back in the box. She collected her things and rose to her feet.

“You’re not his mother,” Nate stood, following her. “You’re his friend and he trusts you to be there when things get out of control.”

Sophie set the box on the counter and waved to the cashier. “Hold these for me,” without breaking stride she began riffling through a rack of tops made from moisture-wicking fabric.

“You wanted to see them hurt,” Nate said lowly.

“So what if I did?” she hissed, holding up a pink v-neck tee shirt and observing her reflection in the mirror. “You can’t say they didn’t deserve it.”

Nate leaned in across the clothes rack. “That’s not what we do.”

“That is exactly what we do,” Sophie said. “Every time you whip yourself into a righteous fury we finish a job with nothing but smoldering ash in our wake.”

“Then maybe we should do things differently,” Nate said.

“We’re thieves, Nate,” Sophie said retreating to the dressing room. “Like it or not, we are what we are.”

Nate took her by the wrist as she slid the curtain closed, his fingers caressing her palm between her thumb and index finger.

“Why does this mean so much to you?” he asked. “I’m just trying to understand.”

“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I don’t know why I’m still so protective of her. All my life I could be anything to anybody; maybe I just wanted someone to be mine.”

Nate’s expression mollified. “I know you’re hurting,” he met her eyes intently. “What happened here?”

Sophie wrenched her arm away. “I don’t need pity,” she hissed. “I don’t want it. I don’t ask for it.”

Nate stepped into her, into the dressing room, and drew the curtain behind him. The closeness of their bodies left her wanting to kiss him or slap him, in almost equal proportion.

“There are two kinds of pity,” he said. “One says, ‘I see your pain and I feel sorry for you.’ The other says, ‘I recognize your pain, and I understand, because we are the same.’”

* * *

_“…I would have told him the truth. I just hadn’t gotten up the courage yet.”  
\--Lacy Beaumont-Wellesley,_ The Lonely Hearts Job

 

Sophie laid in bed, watching the sun creep across the floor through the blinds of the Daly’s cottage. Her makeup was smudged and her hair unwashed. There was a knock on the door and Sophie burrowed deeper under the covers as Babs poked her head through the door.

“Sophie,” she called in a high-pitched warble. “Perhaps you’d better get out of bed and freshen up. You may have company today.”

Sophie sat upright in bed.

“Babs, you didn’t!”

“It’s alright,” Babs came in and sat down on the end of the bed. “Richard just had a talk with your young man, to invite him out to the cottage.”

Sophie moaned, burying her face in the pillow and falling back onto the bed.

“I can’t face him,” Sophie said. “I can’t.”

Babs rubbed circles on Sophie’s shoulder. “Whatever happened, he’s coming out here for you. You need to talk to him. He deserves that much.”

“Babs, I’m sorry,” Sophie kicked her feet under the sheets wildly. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to bring you into this. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“It’s alright,” Babs said. “It’s alright. We’ll get through this.”

Babs stood up and kissed the top of Sophie’s head. “I’ll warm you up a nice bath,” she said. “With bubbles.”

Sophie through off the covers and set her feet on the floor. As she leveraged herself up, a sudden wave of dizziness forced her to sink back down onto the mattress. She groaned and pressed one arm over her belly, leaning forward to put her head between her knees.

“What am I going to do with you?”

After Sophie had showered, fixed her makeup, and made herself presentable, Babs encouraged her to take a stroll through the garden for some fresh air. She was examining a trellis covered in ivy when the car pulled down the woodchip path. Will stepped down from the driver’s side and came around to the front.

Sophie found herself longing to be able to sink back into the ivy.

“Charlotte,” he called, and stopped mid-stride. “Sophie. Sorry. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just new.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Sophie said.

“For what?” Will laughed. “You lied. The name, the boarding school, the vineyard in the south of France. You made it all up. So what? What makes you think that any of that is the reason I love you.”

Sophie nibbled on one fingernail. “I didn’t, strictly speaking, make up the vineyard.”

“Let’s just start over,” he said. “We can go back to the way things were.”

“We can’t go back,” Sophie said.

“Says who?” Will replied. “No one can tell us what to do. We’ve already broken every rule in the book!”

“I’m pregnant,” Sophie shouted.

Will stood silently. For a long, treacherous moment she thought he would turn and run away, like they were balanced precipitously on some sort of Ferris wheel and one stray breath could send them spinning toward the bottom.

“Please say something,” Sophie said.

Will took her face between his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. When she began to cry, he kissed her.

* * *

“So this is a boulder field,” Parker said, leaping effortlessly from one rock from the next. “Why hasn’t someone installed one of these at the Louvre?”

“Take your time!” Richard Daly called after her. Every bit as small, white-haired, and inexplicably energetic as his wife. “We don’t need any sprained ankles.”

Sophie waved him off genially. “She’ll be fine.”

Further back, Hardison panted. “I think I’m dying.”

“Nonsense,” Babs prodded him in the behind with her walking stick and reached into her jacket pocket. “Have a chocolate bar.”

Hardison unwrapped the chocolate skeptically. “It’s like I’m trapped in some weird mountain version of Hansel and Gretel.”

“The weather is bad for us, but good for Aine,” Sophie said. “The heat makes climbing hard, but it’ll be safer for her as long as water levels don’t rise.”

Eliot pressed a finger to his lips, shushing the others. “Listen.”

Sophie stopped and tilted her head. “I hear a whistle.”

“Aine!” Babs called.

“Here, this way!” Eliot called, racing to the side far edge of the cliff, Sophie and the rest following close behind.

“Aine!” Sophie called, peering over the edge, where a girl sat along the river at the bottom, leaning against her backpack with the whistle to her mouth.

“Oh thank God,” the girl called up. “Mum! Dad!”

“Aine, are you okay?” Richard called down.

“I’m okay. All fingers and toes present and accounted for, but I hurt my leg,” Aine called. “I can’t get up.”

Eliot stood, dropping his pack from his shoulders, retrieving the first aide kit. “Aine, my name’s Eliot, I’m coming down to get you.”

“Be careful,” Babs called after Eliot as he worked his way down the rocks.

Aine waved up. “Hi Sophie! Fancy meeting you here.”

“I couldn’t very well let my favorite girl have adventures all by herself.” Sophie laughed as Eliot reached the bottom of the gully.

“She’s alright,” Eliot called up. “Some cuts and bruises, a little dehydrated. The ankle’s swollen, but not broken.”

Nate stayed close to Sophie’s arm, looking on as Eliot patched Aine up, and hoisted her over his back to carry her back up.

“Oh, be careful!” Babs called.

When they reached the top of the ledge, Nate and Richard pulled Aine to safety and Eliot hoisted himself up.

The reunion was touching to observe, as the Daly’s sequestered themselves against one of the boulders, hugging and crying in relief.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Nate said, panting slightly and nudging Sophie gently.

Sophie nodded, looking on as Eliot approached the family reunion cautiously, holding a bottle of water and offering to wrap Aine’s ankle.

“That,” Sophie pointed, as Aine set her hand obligingly on the top of Eliot’s head as he leaned down to examine her foot. “Makes me very nervous.”

Nate shrugged.

“She makes him feel,” he reached out and brushed her elbow with his fingertips. “Justified.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sophie had her suitcase on the bed in the London loft she shared with Will. She had spent the last half hour throwing in the most random pieces of her wardrobe: a pair of gloves, a red cloche, hosiery and a woolen parka. She caught a glimpse of her blanched face and puffy, red eyes and ran to the bathroom for her compact and makeup bag.

Sophie did not consider herself parent material, she never had. She thought now that it was finally over, that she would be relieved, but instead she just felt lonely.

Her hands shook as she rifled through the medicine cabinet, indiscriminately tossing bottles of pills into her satchel. She laid her hand upon a pair of nail scissors and hastily cut the hospital bracelet from her wrist and tossed it into the rubbish bin.

“Sophie!” Will’s voice rang through the loft. “Sophie.”

Sophie returned to the bedroom to find Will staring at the suitcase with glassy eyes.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Sophie set her makeup bag into the suitcase and closed the lid.

“I’m heading out,” she said, swiping her sleeve across her eyes hastily. “There’s really no reason for me to stay any longer, so I’ll just leave.”

She zipped her bag and lifted it from the bed pointedly, ducking her head.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” she murmured.

“Sophie stop,” Will barred her passage from the room, his arms encircling her. “He was my son too.”

Sophie collapsed into his chest, a strangled sob catching in her throat as the smell of Scotch invaded nostrils. She swallowed once and stood up straight, lifting her bag.

“Goodbye, Will,” she whispered, slipping past him and out the door.

* * *

A few short days, some of the world’s best Indian food, a hop, skip, jump, and one wedding later, the Leverage team sat in a bar in County Cork Ireland. Nate sat at the bar, eyeing a pint of Murphy’s, having assumed a posture not unlike his typical attitude at McRory’s.

“I don’t know how you talked us into this,” he said as Sophie crept up behind him.

“Look, look, look,” Parker hopped over, pointing across the room. “The dog is sitting at the bar. How cool is that?”

Sophie smiled, watching her leave to check on Hardison who was waging World War three against the small village’s non-existent WiFi.

“Nobody turns down an invitation to and Irish wedding,” Sophie said.

“It must be a curse upon the women in my family,” Babs offered, approaching to wave to the bar tender. “Falling in love with Irish men.”

Nate observed the old woman skeptically as she retrieved two shot glasses and returned to the happy couple’s table.

Sophie watched couples turning on the dance floor merrily, just in time to see Aine deposit Eliot in the nearest chair before scooping up the closest available man and spinning back out into the crowd. Nate turned to look over his shoulder.

“Didn’t she have a sprained ankle?” he asked.

“She’s half Irish,” Sophie said. “Babs always said she thinks like an English gentlewoman, and dances like a mad Tinker’s daughter.”

Sophie sat and pushed the pint glass further down the bar. The sound of music and laughter hung in the air.

“Why don’t I use your real name?” Nate asked, leaning onto his forearms. “It’s not as though we have anything left to hide from the others.”

Sophie shrugged. “You know, it was the most popular girl’s name the year I was born; I spent most of my childhood trying to change it. I guess it never really made me feel like myself.”  
She watched Nate’s eyes passed through the crowd, lingering on Naomi’s young nieces and nephews, the girls with golden hair and polka-dotted dresses, and the boys with cherubic faces and dark curls. Seeing their eyes so vibrant and alive, anything else seemed unimaginable.

Sophie stood. “I’m going to get some air.”

As she slipped out, Richard approached the bar and Nate nodded politely.

“You have two beautiful daughters,” Nate said.

Richard leaned against the bar and lifted the untouched pint, taking a long drink. “Why don’t we call it an even three?”

Nate nodded, reaching across the bar for a napkin and a pen. He scribbled a few notes and folded the napkin, setting it in his jacket pocket.

“Please excuse me,” he said, slipping out of the bar after Sophie.

He found her sitting on a pile of rocks in the field behind the bar.

“Everything alright?” he called. Sophie sat up straighter. As he approached, he realized that the rocks were roughly arranged in a square, as though they might have once been part of some sort of shelter.

“Just thinking,” she said. “Richard used to tell us this story, about a father and son who began building a sheepfold together. But the son went off to the city, and the sheepfold fell to ruins.”

Nate stood beside her. “We had better help them out, then.”

Nate leaned down and lifted a sizable stone from the grass and set it on top of the wall. Sophie knelt down to follow suit, lifting one rock and then another before taking her seat once more, wrapping her arms around herself.

Nate slid off his jacket and placed it over her shoulders.

“When you’re ready,” he said lowly. “I’ll show you how an Irishman dances.”

Sophie smiled. “I’ll be in in a minute,” she agreed.

Nate bent down and placed a kiss upon her hairline before returning to the bar. Sophie watched him go, and slipped her hands into the jacket pockets.

Her fingers closed around something, and she drew out the napkin, unfolding it to find a few lines of Nate’s tight scribble:

_For oft, when on my couch I lie_  
In vacant or in pensive mood,  
They flash upon that inward eye  
Which is the bliss of solitude;  
And then my heart with Susan fills,  
And dances with the daffodils. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand, thousand thank yous to my wonderful artist crescent_gaia for her inspiring playlist and the freedom she gave me to tell this story. Thank you again to alinaandalion to stepping forward as a much-needed beta reader. I only hope I made you, and Sophie/Nate shippers everywhere, proud.


End file.
